I lied, sorry! It was an accident- Fleur is up next, and Dung is making his entrance!
Cheers,
Jenna
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28
Draco
He was as shaken as he'd ever been. What had the idiot been thinking? He was risking everything! What if the Dark Lord thought he'd been in on the plot? Theodore Nott was a dead man. Draco was aiding and abetting at this moment for his oldest friend, the boy he'd spent every horrible summer party rolling eyes with.
Theo looked troubled in his sleep, rolling in the blankets Draco had conjured. Draco couldn't blame him. How did it feel to sleep for the last time? Nott snored like it was his last meal, some twisted rite of passage into the afterlife; he thrashed, overcome by a nightmare, no doubt, of the red eyes that were soon to find his and bleed him out, and Draco wrung his hands and paced to the study. Mother mustn't find Nott here. The manhunt had already begun. Bella was on the hunt, enraged that the Weasley girl had escaped- and from the Dark Lord's private quarters! Draco knew his mother's mind was weak; she could never hide something of this magnitude from the Dark Lord's conscience. He would smell it on her the minute she came into the room.
His friend was already an orphan for his crime. He had taken the news surprisingly well, as though he had expected the worst and was relieved that his father's death had been quick. If Nott felt any remorse that he had been the cause of the execution, he was not saying so; his body was thoroughly beaten, but he had stared at the wall, nodded, and then returned to Draco's chambers, falling into a deep, restless sleep.
Draco and Nott had spent years together in their youth, sharing a tutor before Hogwarts, placed in the same house and classes in school, going home for the holidays to Malfoy Manor. Nott's mother had died after his birth at the Dark Lord's bidding, when her parents had refused to procure rare poisons for the Dark Lord from their apothercary. His father had wanted little to do with his son, now that his heir was born. Narcissa had a soft spot for the young pureblood, who was more polite at the age of seven than Draco was at seventeen. Nott was somber for a young boy, his mouth a perpetual frown, and Narcissa had always loved spoiling her only son. She'd adopted Nott officially into the Manor during the summer after their first year and the two boys had raced matching Nimbus brooms around the huge grounds, trailing the river Draco secretly loved to fish in.
By the end of their third year, they had learned to distance themselves in school. It would not do for any Slytherin to appear overly fond or close to his fellows; friendship was a sign of weakness and gullibility. The boys had kept their companionship to notes, meeting outside in warm weather and in the privacy of the dungeons for wizards' chess and dividing up the packages Narcissa packed with strict instructions that Draco share his loot. Draco had found by third year he didn't mind.
In the winter of their sixth, surrounded by the shadow of the fate Draco had drawn, the boys came home to a reserved, gloomy Manor, the huge rooms no longer hide-and-spell venues or wide hallways made for games of flying chicken. They did not speak of the task Draco had been given. Narcissa remained alternatively despondent or aloof, and she threw herself into creating the cheer that the house's occupants so clearly lacked. The Manor was resplendent, and for the first time in memory, Narcissa insisted that the boys and she decorate the tree themselves. Lucius belittled his wife, arguing that she was involving the boys in a Muggle pastime, but Narcissa was a Black. The boys decorated that goddamn tree.
Twelve feet tall and spanning ten at the bottom, it was a magnificent full evergreen. Nott had strung shiny fairie lights for days over the branches, while Narcissa had directed a sour-faced but secretly pleased Draco in hanging the family heirloom ornaments, which numbered in the thousands. Some were ivory and ebony, precious metals, or carved wooden figurines, while others were cantering thestrals, hippogriffs, and glass dragons that spewed real flames. Lucius had deigned to hang his family crest- by wand- on one of the upper branches, and had assisted a determined Narcissa in looping bunches of mistletoe throughout the tree. It was a side of his father Draco had rarely seen; the day he broke his leg flying, and his father had healed it himself; the night before he left for Hogwarts his first year; the kiss he'd interrupted in his father's office in fifth; and the time, try as he might to forget it, he'd walked into the dining room to see his mother sprawled under his father on the table, who was tenderly caressing her hair. Lucius Malfoy was not the type of man to partake in frivolity or family bonding.
It was a hair that had started it all that Christmas. Nott had handed two bulbs of clear, delicate glass that played nursery rhymes when touched with a wand. They were the last ornaments in a box that had held Narcissa's dowry ornaments- her precious Black family treasures. The box had included a Black family crest of solid gold, a striped witches' hat with real jade from China, a collection of famous Wizard figurines in precious metals made by Raphael himself, a series of birds charmed to sing "God Rest Ye Merry Hippogriffs" from their posts, and a trio of miniature floating wishing stars, encased in translucent bubble charms. Each nursery rhyme bulb also held a single lock of hair- baby hair- from the two sisters: Bella and Cissy. Andromeda's was conspicuously absent.
Neither boy had missed the significance those hairs presented. With a vial of polyjuice, Bella's dark hair could be seen in Hogwarts- Diagon Alley- Hogsmeade- while she was hundreds of miles away. The opportunities for practical jokes went unscrutinized: for Draco, there were bigger fish to fry. His aunt was going to pay for her abuse.
It had not been difficult to pilfer the ornament after the holidays that Christmas, but the glass bauble lay forgotten in Nott's trunk, the least likely of the two to be searched, for a year now. When Theo had heard that Ginny Weasley, the girl he'd long nursed a soft-spot for to Draco's perpetual annoyance, had been captured and was being held hostage, he had taken matters into his own hands with an intensity Draco had never seen before in his friend. Perhaps it had been the firewiskey the two had consumed long into that night that made Theo bold- or insane, depending on your perspective, Draco acknowledged. To him, insanity won out. Maybe it had been the trauma Theo had endured when he had failed to earn his mark at the attack on Diagon Alley, or the torture he'd seen. Theo always was a softie when it came to violence, Draco knew. He was quiet, a loner- but that did not mean he did not hear what people said and did to others around him. Possibly it had been the growing need to throw off the chain of command both the boys were being slowly ground down under, to tell the Death Eaters, the Dark Lord, and Slytherin himself to go shag themselves. Draco didn't know, and he didn't care to find out- all that mattered now was that Nott had entered the Dark Lord's headquarters dressed as Bella, polyjuiced and with vocal charms in place, only to come face to face with the real Bellatrix, who had come close to killing him with a violent severing charm. The polyjuice began to wear off. Nott's father had witnessed the duel, and upon realizing it was his son, had thrown a stunner at Bella, trying to stop the death of his heir. It was the moment that stopped time: Nott Jr. had apparated away, and his father had been executed in his place by the Dark Lord himself, assumed to be aiding his son. Nott had –somehow- managed to come straight through the wards on Malfoy Manor to the last place he would be looked for- the prison cellar.
Draco had found Nott passed out, whey-faced and bleeding heavily, in the evening when he'd come down to bring Ollivander, Luna, and the others their dinner. The Looney girl- Luna- had given a frenetic Draco one of the fake galleons he knew Weasley would have, and Draco had followed her instructions to a T, covering Nott, healing his wounds, and then signaling the Weasleys for assistance, asking if they had a place Nott could hide.
The Weasleys. He had stooped to ask the Weasleys for help.
Draco didn't think he'd ever look Weasel in the face again.
Now all he had to do was ask one of the house elves to take them to the meeting spot in two hours time. Until then, he had to keep the boy warm- hydrated- and reapply some basic healing spells Looney- fine, Luna- had suggested. With luck it would never be known Nott had been here, and the Order would be able to keep him safe, get him out of the country.
Draco gripped his glass tighter and resumed his pacing, waiting for the feather on his desk to light up as the signal. Two hours and twenty-three minutes and . . . six seconds . . . to go. What he couldn't know was that Theodore Nott had no intention of hiding from the Dark Lord who'd taken away his family and his safety. In fact, Theodore was feeling quite a bit . . . rebellious.
And as the sole heir to his family's Manor, he had quite a lot of assets at his command.
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For any who were wondering . . . Bella, as a Black, does not need to be in the Fidelius to find Grimmauld Place. They have hidden the Order Headquarters, but she needs only to wish to find her ancestor's home, and she can see Grimmauld. For her, it is first and foremost the Black estate. Snape has not told her the location- he could not even if he wished to, as his tongue is tied whenever he attempts to utter Grimmauld's location. Death Eaters know where it is, but cannot see it until Yaxley gets in by grabbing Hermione. That news had not reached the Weasleys, though Kingsley has already set up new wards, which effectively shut out all except Bella and Narcissa, who have Black blood.
